Penguins - marine sentinels on the way out? Climate change versus the many regional threats.

ELLENBER, URSULA; GARCIA BORBOROGLU, P.; SEDDON, PHIL; MATTERN, THOMAS

Canterbury

Congreso; ew Zealand Marine Sciences Society Annual Congress; 2017

Using two threatened penguin species as an example, we illustrate current challenges and opportunities for effective protection of coastal marine habitat in the face of environmental change. Like all central place foragers, penguins have to balance the need for breeding habitat with the requirement to find food to sustain themselves and their offspring. Species confined to narrow ranges may be more vulnerable to environmental perturbations. Fiordland penguins/tawaki (Eudyptes pachyrhynchus) breed discontinuously along a stretch of only ~500 km of coastline in New Zealand?s rugged and inaccessible southwest. Yet, despite their limited distribution, the species utilises remarkably diverse oceanic habitats, ranging from shelf, to pelagic and even fjord ecosystems. Consequently, global environmental change might differentially affect parts of the population depending on which habitats are used. Yellow-eyed penguins (Megadyptes antipodes), in comparison, appear less flexible in their foraging strategies. Although their distributional range is larger than that of Fiordland penguins, as almost exclusive bottom foragers Yellow-eyed penguins are sedentary and limited to the shallow continental shelf as marine habitat. We will discuss how the differences in their marine ecology will affect their ability to cope with environmental change, and provide data to inform and refine current conservation efforts.